Salay Pagoda Festival

  

Today we are attending the Salay Pagoda Festival to celebrate Waso Full Moon Day. It was Gautama, the last Buddha, who established Waso and instigated its strict rules. (My information here comes from Professor Saya Htay). Waso is known as the Buddhist Lent and extends from July to October. During this time the monks cannot travel and must stay in their own monasteries. There are practical reasons for this: July to October is the rainy season. In those early times the monks had only one or at most two robes: if they got wet they could get sick. In addition, farmers would have planted their seeds: peanuts, sesame, rice and vegetables and they didn’t need monks trooping across the fields disturbing their crops.

In all, the Buddha laid down 227 rules, however it seems many have softened over the years. These days during Waso people are not allowed to marry and old folk must meditate each week on the Sabbath day. Many folk give up alcohol and smoking and eat only vegetables. Some fishermen give up fishing: presumably they have another source of food. There are no festivals after Waso until October’s full moon day, which will occur around the 16^th of that month.

In a small town on our way to the festival all traffic had stopped and everyone was standing looking one way. Suddenly there was the eerie sound of a WW II air-raid warning (was it a coup? I wondered). To my astonishment everyone fell silent for two minutes. This was for Remembrance. The observation of Martyrs Day falls each year on 19 July. It is the day that General Aung San, the father of Aung San Su Kyi, was assassinated.

Around 6.00 this morning some 25 monks from the surrounding circa 25 monasteries walked to the Salay pagoda. The foreigner couldn’t face a two-hour drive at 4.30 in the morning so what follows is as told by Professor Saya Htay and her Associate Win San. The monks would have walked – barefoot of course - to collect their food from the festival goers. All the outlying villagers had arrived the day before, watched an impromptu theatre in the evening and stayed overnight in the zayat, temporary accommodation built for this purpose. The monasteries would have sent bullock carts to take back the numerous gifts. First, there would have been a great deal of food for the monks to store, then robes which may have been woven by the villagers. I remember in December one year I attended a similar festival in Yangon at the Shwedagon Pagoda. The difference was that at the Shwedagon it was a competition that involved women weaving robes all night from dawn to dusk to try to finish robes for the monks.  I was told this didn't happen here.